Busy day today - at the cars bright and early 7.50 am (well, that's bright and early for me on a weekend) to swop audios and get ready for car alarm bloke. Say hallo, Miguel from Southern Car Security of Crawley. 7.51 am Miguel's big van blocks out sun. Coffee on, work starts.

 

Postie arrives - hallo LeGrath's rear JBLs (ta David, very nice, just the job). Anyroadup, as I strip out my stereo/remote/bass tube etc, I become less than impressed with the work of some of the so-called professionals who have just bodged their way to a successful conclusion. Oh well, it's quite good fun having a poke around and going "tsk tsk" and then solving things.

 

Work cracks on and I even miss the Saturday lunchtime pint (now there's dedication for you - only for Zeds... ). All my kit and wiring out from the Silver Machine and the Nissan radio/cassette back in. It works - hooray! Make note to fix aerial connector.

 

Miguel finishes the alarm, hands over keys, remotes, certificate, instructions etc. Now I can stuff my Sony and Pioneer into Leo (Blue NA Auto). Time passes. CD changer works, tape works, bass tube works, radio waiting for diversity adapter (thanks, Bob), remote commander works - blimey, I've usually melted something by now. (I have one torn nail and drawn blood three times but that's better than normal for me when doing anything practical.)

 

And now I hit the problem. Getting the rear speakers to work. The standard ISO connector doesn't do it. It does everything else: aerial uppydowny, L & R front - all fine. The breakout for the rear speakers has 4 wires (L rear +/-, R rear +/1) exactly as per Daves_Zed's wiring diag

 

But the only available connector on the Z wiring loom has 6 wires. I plugged it in to the ISO but nothing.

I took the ISO apart and took a rear speaker out to manually connect speaker direct to feed. Worked fine. Tried to test each wire in turn against the Zed connector and that's where the fun started. The connector is this one:

 

Looking at it from the front, the wires are

1 Orange / 2 Light Green / 3 Dark Green

4 Black & White / 5 Black & Yellow / 6 Grey

 

The Black & White might be faded Black & Violet

 

From Dave's diag, this should be

1 Orange Rear Right + / 2 Light Green Rear Left + or maybe / 3 Dark Green Rear Left +

4 Black & maybe Violet might be Rear Right - / 5 Black & Yellow Rear Left - / 6 Grey ???

 

I have tried so many combinations that I now give up. The strange thing is that if you stick any wire to top right 3 Dark Green then its pair will give sound connected to 1, 2, 4 or 5 - but not at full chat. I found one combination which gave Right Rear at full chat but Left Rear at lower volume.

 

It's a JDM Series 3 so I am fairly sure (not 100%) there's no amp or gubbins. The (old) rear speakers worked fine with the (old) Nissan stereo. Both old and new rear speakers work fine when connected manually to the ISO rear output pairs.

 

Any ideas?

I've got a similar problem so look forward to the answer.

 

Cheers - Dave

run wires down to the speakers from the connections then

what did the car have as a stereo before you started , original nissan? 1 or 2 units? is there a cd remote control built in the centre collum storage bit? is it a swb? what year?

if the connector looksfrom the wire side like:

 

latch

dark green L+ R+

grey L- R-

 

then dark green is +ve feed to external amp and grey is ground to external amp

 

 

if swb look under the trim to the passenger side of the rear shelf and you might find the amp, best bet is to bypass the amp with new speaker wires from head unit to speakers, otherwise connect the grey to ground and the green to the switched output of the headunit

Retro620ti - yes OK but I was trying to use the existing harness without making the sort of rat's nest I just took out of my last one! Plus I just put all the trims back so was trying to find a way out of taking it all apart again.

 

ianl - I think you might be right. Logically, what else would the connector NEED the extra 2 wires for? It also explains (sort of) what happened when I tried random permutations. (It was a two unit Nissan (Clarion) radio/cass top unit and CD bottom uint. No remote. 2+2 Dec 93 Series 3).

 

1) Does anyone know where the amp is on the 2+2 Series 3? Is it the same as ianl's swb?

2) Why not power up the amp and use it? Does anyone know if the OEM fed the amp at speaker level or line level? (Yes OK any rational person would have designed it to be at line level as God intended but this is Nissan and a 300ZX we're talking about :p )

afaik all the additional amplifier units in the different models were designed to run off speaker level

 

the amp in the uk spec lwb is under the plastic trim over the suspention turret on the drivers side in the boot

 

the only other option i know of is the combined speaker / amp units but i guess having replaced the speakers it can't be that

 

3 reasons not to use the inbuilt amp:

 

it is probably to low a power for your new more modern speakers

 

the gain added to a modern high power headunit will probably give too high a volume compared to the front speakers and may clip the inline amp giving distorted sounds and leading to speaker damage

 

some of the inline amp / speaker systems were designed by Bose who used a much lower impedance of speakers and amplifiers than everyone else. mixing standard impedance kit with Bose low impedance kit can give a nasty sound.

 

 

some or none of these may be relevant and it depends on how fussy you are about audio quality and what you are going to be listening to and at what volume. I work with high end PA systems and am slightly deaf so i like it very loud and as good a sound as possible

Easiest thing to do mate is just run new speaker cables to the rear ;)

ianl - interesting, ta. Might give it a try.

 

The wiring diag seems to agree with you. Can't see the gray on it, though but if it's an earth, does it matter? The rear amp seems to be grounded anyway through the body and so (obviously) is the head unit. I wonder if the green 12v+ is just a trigger and not a full power feed - it seems too thin to deliver any ampage. I'm not so good at reading wiring diags but it looks as if the rear amp might have its own connection to the ignition.

 

I'll have a look to see if the J amp is in the same place you said for the UK and the manual says for Europe.

...but probably next week, now.

 

I'm pretty sure it's not Bose as the rears aren't the enclosed moulded units - just normal Hitachi (now replaced by lovely JBLs). But is anyone's looking for Bose advice and repair, I found these removal and info pages.

 

I understand what you say about power / possible clipping but if I can find time, I'll have a test and see what happens. It would be nice to see how the inbuilt stuff performs or not. I'm usually as fussy about sound as I am about keeping things stock!

 

Cheers - Gio

just as an idea aswell the extra wires in that plug maybe tweeters aswell as ive got them fitted in my doors! i may be wrong but that would explain why it wont play full volume... if its any help